The big dance is but mere days away.
The 2009 UPA Finals website is up, and the teams and schedules are listed. I will be posted previews of the divisions shortly.
Canada has five squads in the championship this year:
- Traffic (BC) and Capitals (ON) in Women's
- GOAT (ON) in Open
- GLUM (ON) in Masters
- Pyschoplastique (AB) in Co-ed
- I think VC Ultimate is on fire right now, and their sublimation series is H-O-T.
- I think the Carleton-Western game, from all witnesses, was a great game play wise and spirit wise.
- I think University of Toronto's (Torontula) run from 2006-2008 qualifies as a dynasty.
- I think I wish the national championship at the club level was as valued as the University one is now.
- I think Mark Lloyd will be a captain for Team Canada at some point in his career
- I think the Capitals need to make semis in Sarasota
- I think GLUM is as good as they have ever been, and their time to win Masters is now
- I think GOAT getting their a$$ handed to them in the regional final was a blessing
- I think WFDF under 23 worlds is a great idea for 2011, but too late for 2010
- I think Ottawa's first national title in open since 1998 should not be underestimated
UWO Sharks 2009 CUUC- VC Ultimate Sublimation Jerseys
17 comments:
Wish I could agree with you on VC Ultimate but I find their customer service & turn around time to be sub par. They're lucky that they're the only company that does what they do in the ultimate world because if there was another company that did the same stuff I'd use them.
That being said, sublimation jerseys are getting better every year. You'll have to post a roundup of some of the better designs out there.
What do you mean by what VC "does," March? You can get sublimated jerseys elsewhere, if that's what you want. Five and Breakmark come to mind.
Steve, I'd like to hear some more of your thinking behind this remark: "I think I wish the national championship at the club level was as valued as the University one is now."
This year's data seems to confirm the trend CUPA was predicting: that CUUC attendance is an especially strong function of location, with a local maximum near south-eastern Ontario and Quebec. As we can freshly recall, Edmonton 2008 was not a popular one.
Good to know that Five and Breakmark do sublimation as well, I didn't know that.
Being a Toronto based player it seems that the only option is VC, it's almost assumed that's who you'll order through. My bad experiences happened this year so next year I'll seriously be looking at alternatives for gear. I really like VC products but my interactions with them this past summer left a bad taste in my mouth.
I think you've done it before, but nice Peter King take on the 10 things you think you think. Doesn't that mean you are simply not sure about any of those statements? Should we be taking them with a grain of salt?
T1000. Edmonton. In October. Come on. Can you blame teams for taking a pass on that one? I mean CUPA can't do anything but reward the bid if U of A makes it. As I've said before, Canada's geography is the major obstacle to have meaningful Nationals (especially at the university level) every year
Wow. I just had a look at the teams that played in 2008 (all 6 of them) and only U of T was from east of Regina. Not even UBC went to play in Edmonton. I think this "Nationals" win could hardly be counted towards the U of T "dynasty".
Perhaps the policy of having 2 consecutive University Nats in the west and then 2 in the east should be revisited (although perhaps that is not an official policy). It seems that more teams were able to scrape together funds to play in Vancouver in 2007, but then, perhaps didn't have enough to play out west again in 2008? Maybe a 1 year east, 1 year west format would be better and would exclude less teams (especially over a consecutive 2 year period).
Going beyond the disaster in Edmonton, how many team from out west sent a full squad to this year's CUUC? UBC I heard sent a skeleton crew. And outside them and Tommy Douglas was there another team west of Lakehead in the open division?
You could almost say the University series is worse off then the club one. You may not always get the top teams in the club division, but you usually get some sense of regional diversity.
Hey, Greg. Oh, I know. But that's one of the pitfalls in comparing the perceived values in CUUCs and CUCs -- as it stands, they fluctuate wildly from year to year as a function of location (Winnipeg 2002 and Kamloops 2003 were also weakly attended). And even when CUUCs are "valued," I would call that value more of an Ontario echo-chamber effect.
However, you'll be happy to know that CUPA is revising the way we choose Nationals locations, and adding key incentives for teams that travel. This year marks the beginning of an experiment that we hope will make CUUCs more consistently attended in the future. But I don't think I'm at liberty yet to divulge details. Ask Steve, maybe. Point being: we're working on it.
Steve, thanks for the U of T shout-out.
Just in reply to Greg King - U of T also won CEUUC in 2008. With so few teams going to CUUC we felt it pertinent to legitimize the season by winning Easterns first. That leaves only UBC and quite frankly I think we would have taken them.
This years performance was disappointing but not entirely unexpected. It leaves the door open for improvement and I'm looking forward to seeing the new guard take the reigns.
Taylor
A few words on VC. I think they are infact doing the best work in the business these days. Their catch phrase is "If you can draw it, we can make it" and it's quite true. Even better, they have a talented (if a bit "euro") creative team on hand incase you can't draw... Five and Breakmark are in the business but I have yet to see the quality of DESIGN that VC exhibits. Also, VC has sweet new materials and is made in Canada.
If you've had a problem with VC in the past, why not let them know? My experiences with them in the past and this year suggest they're actively trying to improve on their customer service.
The links I posted were too long. Anyways, I thought I'd provide some examples of Five jerseys.
http://fiveultimate.com/store/club-replica-gear
http://fiveultimate.com/store/cus-replica-s
Ironically, the Western Ontario jerseys look startlingly like the Western Washington jerseys. When I first saw the CUUC photos, I was a little confused.
Big congratulations to Carleton on their successful run to the title. This was a season of great parity in University ultimate, the eventual winners survived a 13-12 thriller with Queen's in the semi-finals, and for Carleton to emerge as the champions speaks volumes to their abilities. Having been a part of the CUUC scene for the last 4 years, I can honestly say that this year's field was the deepest of any I can remember. Location certainly played a big part in bringing out the best in Canadian University talent, but it was nonetheless encouraging to see how good some of these teams were. The key, of course, will be repeating this level next year.
Also, thanks to Steve for the U of T shout-out. Not the time to re-hash old glory, this is definitely Carleton's hour, but to Greg King I would also point out that from 2006-2008 U of T went 23-0 at Nationals with no team coming closer than three points. Also took home the Easterns title all three seasons. If that isn't a dynasty, I don't know what is.
My take on VC, VERY slow turn around. Sure, their graphics are top notch, but I've received shipments TWICE where men's large were two different sizes in the same box. I'm not overly impressed with them as a whole.
This CUUC was certainly one of the deepest. The last time we had CUUC this deep, it was in, MONTREAL 2005. Unfortunately rained out, but 24 men's teams, including UBC, Alberta and Manitoba. Maybe Montreal should host every year.
As Alex (T1000) said, you can't compare CUUC with CUC. They target different groups that have different motivations.
U of T definitely had a great run, and it definitely deserves the title of Dynasty. Especially in the world of University sports where graduations create mandatory turnover.
I'm going to hold off on full explanation and discussion of nationals until after UPAs. That will probably be half of the off seasons articles!
My advice regarding any ultimate company is this- If there is a problem, let them know first and give them the chance to right it. Going straight to the public or to someone's boss takes away their incentive to fix your issue. It's a lose-lose situation. If a company still won't address issues after these efforts, then you should feel free to pass on your experiences.
Hola,
The CUUC were great in Mtl, thanks to Kirsten Niles and the McGill crew!
But...The CUUC are way too late in the season, only one week after CUUC in Mtl it's already snowing. That mean, no field maintenance for this fall, bad shape just before the snow, etc...
That being said Montreal Ultimate is working hard with the PSO in Quebec (FQU) to bring more school from Qc to CUUC.
That being said I like to have CUUC on the East Coast!
Mark Lloyd has been a Captain for Team Canada. He was one of the Captains for the Junior Canadian Team that competed in Vancouver last year.
As always, Kirsten ran a flawless tournament. We were darn lucky with the weather - as it snowed this past Thursday in Montreal and is pouring rain this morning, which would have potentially cancelled some of the games if CUUC had been this weekend.
However, having said that, I can't really support moving CUUC earlier. Already, the season is short. We (UdeM women) started practices at the tail end of August, and I feel like time flew by. I definitely love that CEUUC exists. It is an excellent tournament to be able to gauge the other eastern teams, and leaves a few weeks to perfect team strategies before CUUC. FOr any team who didn't participate this year, I highly recommend it. Our team would probably not have finished so strongly if we hadn't attended.
It will be interesting to see how many of the newly formed eartern teams still exist next year. It would be great to see some upstart Montreal and Sherbrooke programs continue their progress and show CUPA that their existence was not a one-off because CUUC was in Montreal.
Taylor and Nate, I hope you don't think I was bashing U of T being called a dynsaty, because I certainly wasn't raining on that parade. I was just pointing out that maybe if we were only using CUUC victories as the measurement of a dynasty, then perhaps that 2008 Nats in Edmonton shouldn't be included (what with 6 teams). But I was unaware of some of those other stats that both of you presented (the CEUUC victories and that perfect win-loss record) and I could definitely agree that U of T was the most recent dynasty in Canadian University Ultimate, especially, as Batch pointed out, with the turnover felt in university. I still think Queen's has you beat (though it pains me to say that) with their run in the early part of this decade.
I also like to hear that CUPA is not taking a status quo approach and is looking at some of these challenges and developing possible solutions. I like the idea of incentivs for teams to attend, although I would think winning would be a nice incentive on its own.
As for timing of CUUC, I think that it is as perfect as it can be at the moment. You have a decent chance of the weather being alright, but it leaves enough time to develop a team. and work on strategy as Sonia pointed out. Sure it would be great to have it later in the fall, but unless you have it in Vancouver or Victoria every year, the weather becomes more and more sporadic with each additional week (see snow on ground in MTL this past week). Pesky geography gets in the way again...
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